AG Pushes Again For Change In Law After Clergy Abuse Report

NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) – Pennsylvania’s top prosecutor is appealing again to legislators to change state law so that criminal and civil cases can be pursued in court in decades-old clergy abuse cases.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro is holding a news conference Friday at the court complex outside Philadelphia where entertainer Bill Cosby was convicted last month of sexually assaulting a woman in 2004.

(Photo Credit: KDKA)

A state grand jury in August found that some 300 Roman Catholic priests had sexually abused children in cases going back decades and that church leaders systematically covered it up.

The Pennsylvania House voted last month to give child sex abuse victims, in cases now too old to pursue, two years to file lawsuits. The Senate’s Republican leaders are resisting that provision with only days left in the legislative session.

Shapiro also wants the Legislature to lift the statute of limitations entirely for criminal prosecutions.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)